PETROZAVODSK, June 16. /TASS/. The Clean Arctic national project's volunteers landscaped three mass graves of Soviet soldiers in Karelia's Segezha District. The mission was timed to coincide with the Russia Day celebration in the year of the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, a TASS correspondent reported.

The project's fifth season is dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory and the Year of Defender of the Fatherland. Its main focus will be to improve mass graves, memorials, and memorable historical sites of the Great Patriotic War. More than 2,000 volunteers are expected to take part in missions. Over the project's history, about 7,700 people have collected 19.8 tons of waste and cleaned more than 700 hectares of Arctic land.

"To me, this is a thrilling story, because my two grandfathers, they were brothers, fought on the Karelian front, and were wounded near Medvezhegorsk. Here, we are cleaning military graves, the area around them, and this is very important <...>. Until now, search teams are finding dead soldiers, trace back their stories," the project's leader Andrey Nagibin said.

The main event was at the memorial on the 49th km of the Kochkom - Reboly road. According to Karelia's government, more than 1,100 soldiers of the Karelian Front's 26th Army are buried there, including Hero of the Soviet Union Nikolay Varlamov. The volunteers have also cleaned another two military graves, located on the 25th and 33rd km of that road. About 1,600 Red Army soldiers are buried at the three locations.

The cleanup mission featured about 50 volunteers from the Trans-Baikal, Irkutsk, Vladimir, Volgograd and Tula regions. Upcoming missions will be in the Murmansk and Arkhangelsk regions.

About the Clean Arctic project

The Clean Arctic project began in 2021. Captain of the 50 Let Pobedy nuclear-powered Arctic-class icebreaker Dmitry Lobusov, and Gennady Antokhin, Captain on FESCO’s ships from 1982 to 2012, are the project’s authors. Clean Arctic has developed into a platform uniting public and volunteer organizations, scientists, governors and businesses. The project's partners are Nornickel, Rosatom, PhosAgro and RZD.